Our L5 Use Cases

Hardware Librem 5
6

My working use cases

(The minute I received my Librem 5, I took the SIM out of my iPhone and put it in my Librem 5. The SIM has never gone back.)

This post only discusses things that work. For things that don’t: Librem 5 — painpoint assessment 2021

As a, you know, actual phone

  • voice calls - make and receive
  • SMS - send and receive
  • tested on two different carriers

Network Connectivity

  • WiFi - both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz work but the former has better range and consumes less power
  • mobile data (limited testing)
  • frequently use ssh in to the phone and have used sftp to transfer files to and from the phone

Email

  • did an initial contacts import of several hundred contacts using Contacts Importer
  • use Geary for email - use it every day - more receive than send but both work
  • Geary works well - responsive and adaptive

Music

  • use Lollypop for playing music
  • Lollypop works well - responsive and adaptive
  • I’ve mostly listened via basic analog headphones, where the sound quality is pretty decent

Other apps

  • Dictionary app - usable but requires more work to be fully adaptive
  • Clocks for alarms
  • played around with the Drawing app - it mostly works but haven’t really had cause to use it for anything serious
  • have minicom installed for talking directly to the modem
  • Settings, Terminal, Screen Shot are useful and/or essential utilities

USB peripherals

  • random flash drive (with USB-C to USB-A adapter)
  • USB-C SSD (2 different models)
  • gigabit ethernet dongle (with USB-C to USB-A adapter)

The GbE dongle is great because if someone breaks the WiFi badly, I can still get on the internet to download updates to fix the problem.

Bluetooth peripherals

  • keyboard
  • speakers

The out-of-the-box success with the above USB and Bluetooth peripherals is a testament to the benefits of the approach of working with a standard Linux kernel. A lot of stuff “just works”.

Random other phone stuff

  • uSD card - I’ve put some of my music collection on a uSD card and put it in the phone - enough music so that I don’t get bored listening to the same thing over and over
  • smartcard - it is recognised and I put a PIN on it but I haven’t learnt enough yet in order to do good things with it
  • backup - we all do backups, right? - an external SSD (or other drive) can be used to back up the uSD card and I booted Jumpdrive on the Librem 5 in order to back up the eMMC drive
  • auto-rotate of the screen works
  • charging - I have an external charger and a spare battery (hence I can charge a battery outside of the Librem 5) and I also have a car charger (just a standard USB-C / USB-A charger) for charging the Librem 5 in the car

Semi-working stuff

  • Camera - has worked, then not worked, now working again - but, regardless, the software needs a fair bit of work
  • Convergence / external monitor - recognises external monitor but that’s about it for me - trying to get something fully usable hasn’t been a priority for me as yet
  • GNSS - downloaded ephemeris etc. from the satellite and got a fix with valid latitude and longitude but needs integration with the rest of the software e.g. would like the camera software to geotag any photo taken

The above post is mostly a summary of: [MyL5] Australia/New Zealand As per the (unofficial) rules of this topic … any questions or comments can be posted there.

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